Mastectomy Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Mastectomy, including details on breast cancer, prosthesis, recovery, surgery, complications.

The efficacy of breast MRI in predicting breast conservation therapy.

Blair S, McElroy M, Middleton MS, Comstock C, Wolfson T, Kamrava M, Wallace A, Mortimer J

Moore's Cancer Center, University of California San Diego, San Diego, California, USA. slblair@ucsd.edu

BACKGROUND: Breast conservation therapy (BCT) has equal efficacy compared to mastectomy in treating breast cancer. Accurate pre-operative measurement of tumor size can limit re-excision procedures. Breast MRI may improve pre-operative evaluation of extent of disease. OBJECTIVE: To examine the correlation of extent of disease on breast MRI with pathologic data to determine the utility of breast MRI in surgical planning of BCT. METHODS: We retrospectively reviewed our prospective database of women undergoing breast MRI. We identified 115 women with breast cancer who underwent a breast MRI and a surgical resection from 2000 to 2003. We compared patients with high-grade tumors (HG, n = 40) to patients with low grade (LG, n = 75). RESULTS: The size of the tumor on MRI correlated with the pathologic size for HG tumors (HG R = 0.76 vs. LG R = 0.45, P = 0.033). Mastectomy was performed in 53 patients. In 10 patients with LG tumors, the MRI findings overestimated their disease. In 11 out of 115 patients the primary tumor or a second tumor was only seen by MRI. CONCLUSION: Breast MRI does change surgical management by detecting additional malignancies. Breast MRI is accurate in staging extent of disease in the breast in patients with HG tumors.

Published 15 August 2006 in J Surg Oncol, 94(3): 220-5.
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